There’s a lot written about brands – positioning, attributes, equity. But sometimes brands are so badly damaged they need a whole extra level of expert care and attention. And when the damaged brand is a place, its people deserve better.

The UnAwards15 saw 140 colleagues from across the industry descend on the very cool Everyman Cinema in Birmingham last Thursday. The mood was one of big event excitement - Christmas party meets trip to a posh cinema mixed with lashing of great communicators celebrating one another’s work.

Holding the UnAwards at Christmas is deliberate too – we wanted to add a little festive sparkle to the proceedings.

We’re a tad biased but we felt the whole day was a little bit special.

Sitting watching the fabulous Planes, Trains and Automobiles with what felt like a great big group of pals was pretty amazing. The film had a whole bunch of relevant messages and takeaways (and if you have ever watched the movie remember – ‘never assume you are cuddling a pillow’)

Over 140 entries poured into the UnAwards15 from across the UK and from as far afield as Norway.

Central government, local government, NHS, Police, Housing, Fire, Higher Education, third sector and the agency world all took part and our 14 external judges have had quite a task in getting down to our final shortlist.

The standard of your entries this year has been high. We know this because some of our judges are hard to impress, But impressed they were.

Our love and respect for this fabulous comms, PR, marketing and digital community, which we all exist in, just grows and grows and thank you so much for supporting the #UnAwards15.

The chances of there being a comms person out there today who doesn’t think that reviewing and evaluating their work is important will be tiny.

Yeah, yeah, yeah – we know it’s important, but when there are 10 people asking for my help, three comms plans to write, the phone ringing off the hook and the impacts of a comms team which has been cut in half it’s a lot easier said than done.

Sound familiar? Yep, me too.

Amongst the many things I learned in 10 years of leading comms teams it’s that standing back and taking a good hard look at your work is 1. Absolutely vital, and 2. Something of a luxury to do often and well. Like wanting a brand new car but settling for paying the bare minimum to get the old car through another year’s MOT (and that sounds familiar too)

With the consultancy work I have been doing with comms2point0 I have had the incredible opportunity to review a dozen organisation’s communications activity in microscopic detail. This is fascinating work and I thoroughly engross myself in the detail of these reviews. They tell stories and give clear indicators to the ‘what should we do next?’ question.

Next week hundreds of communicators from local and central government as well as other parts of the public service will gather over three days in Coventry for the second Public Service Communications Academy. The event, which is being organised by LGcommunications and GCS, is the most significant local government communications event of the year.

The theme of this year’s Academy is set around the future of public service communications, the challenges we face and our response to those challenges.

The agenda this year includes some of the best practitioners from the public and private sector. We will also be joined by a number of influential leaders from the public sector including Solace president, and Chief Executive of Birmingham City Council, Mark Rogers and a one of Whitehall’s most outspoken civil servants, Louise Casey CB, will give a view from Whitehall talking about how effective comms needs to be at the heart of meeting the current challenges.

We run the UnAwards to support and – in our own way - fly a flag for folks across the UK and beyond who are working in difficult circumstances and still delivering day after day. To sing for the unsung, to recognise the unrecognised.

I hear – and I hear it way too often, I’m afraid – of some less than great behaviours by some organisations and the way they are treating staff. To a degree this is to be expected with the enormous and ongoing cuts to the public sector – with 350k people leaving local government alone in the past five years there is unprecedented change taking place.

But this doesn’t excuse shoddy behaviour.

Lack of recognition has been a theme in much of the staff survey feedback I have seen over the years too. Sometimes your achievements will be appreciated by others, sometimes they’ll not be. That’s a fact of comms life, as it is in life.

And for me, part of the UnAwards is flying back into face of this and celebrating what you do and do well. We’ve been at, and are, at your coalface so we know.

So the real reason that you should enter the UnAwards is to celebrate you.

We know that a common complaint from comms folk, and others for that matter, is a lack of recognition for their work.

Whether it’s a brilliant campaign, managing communications through a crisis or just turning up every day of the year and being the best you can be it’s not a lot to ask to get the odd ‘well done’ or ‘thank you’.

But it doesn’t happen often enough and that is the ultimate reason behind the comms2point UnAwards 15. To shine a light on the colleagues proudly flying comms flags across the sectors.

Now there’s only one thing better than being shortlisted for an award and that’s being nominated by someone else for an award. It’s a special thing. It means you’ve caught someone’s eye, demanded their attention or impressed them with your creativity, doggedness, enthusiasm and skills.

Know someone like that? Then why not nominate them in the UnAwards 15.

Very rarely in life do you get to choose a brand new comms team from absolute scratch. You normally inherit folk and work with what you've got. But what if you had a blank sheet and the chance to choose. Who would make the cut?

So you’ve delivered some great work this year which has made a difference. And you might just feel like it deserves a little smidge of recognition. Well you’re in luck because the comms2point0 UnAwards have arrived giving you the opportunity to show off your best work.

It might be a social media initiative which delivered amazing returns or it might be a shiny new website which has made your online business purr. How about a campaign which has made a difference to your residents, patients or customers. Or a good old fashioned piece of great storytelling.

The UnAwards are our opportunity to showcase great work and celebrate a hugely creative and dedicated community.

Why ‘UnAwards’, you ask? Well they’re a deliberate alternative to the £300-a-pop, black tie, swanky London hotel event awards machine which exists in our industry.

That’s not a slight on these events – if you have been to one of them, and won an award in the process, you’ll have felt pretty good about the whole thing.

But for many the cost has become prohibitive. This is making the awards landscape a bit, well, ‘exclusive’.

That’s not how we like to do things. We’re more Sundance Film Festival than Oscars Ceremony.

The UnAwards are accessible to the entire comms, pr, marketing and digital community and, importantly, will recognise the contributions of colleagues across the sectors for their creative endeavours over the past 12-months.

Engaging, listening and talking is a key comms skill. For the Welsh Language CommissionER this involves standing in a field - literally. In our first bilingual post we look at what engagement looks like for an organisation where cultural is a key element.

I’m sure we’d all agree that for effective “engagement” to happen it is much better for us, the communicators, to go to our target audience, rather than the other way round.

That’s why the Welsh Language Commissioner attends three large annual events in Wales giving over half a million people the opportunity to stop by her stand, to say “hello”, complain, suggest, demand, propose, enquire, insist and every other word that the thesaurus can come up with!

Plenty of folks have switched sectors in their careers, and many more follow. In this fascinating post we learn all about the differences, and similarities, in communications in local government and the NHS from one of the best comms pros around.

I’ve been a long time reader and occasional contributor to comms2point0 so it’s a real treat to be guest editing and a genuine honour to be asked.

Having moved to work in a hospital, after spending the last seven years at various councils the thing I’m most commonly asked is what’s the biggest difference? Clearly, that’s about as boring as asking how many times Newcastle United will concede more than four goals this season, but I do see some interesting parallels between the NHS as a whole and the average public sector comms team.

I love ice cream. I’ve tried them all. Compared and contrasted and, in my own head at least, decided which are the best.

The Italians are masters of ice cream. But the best of the lot is a British brand.

What adds to their appeal is the masterly way in which this product is branded. So simple, so clean, so stylish and with echoes of its past. It perfectly complements the product. And that’s the trick with branding.

The company is called Hockings, and it you’re a visitor to North Devon you may have sampled their fine good. That’s not a typo either – it's ‘good’, singular. Because this product is so good it comes in only one flavour – vanilla.

It’s been made in Appledore by the same family since 1936 and their small fleet of branded vans has been travelling the North Devonian coastline selling their vanilla-only product to locals and visitors alike for nearly 80 years.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to present some day job work to a panel of awards judges. And it got me thinking about what I thought had been my best work ever. The projects which I’d enjoyed most, had delivered the best results, or just given a sense of satisfaction and achievement.

Successful marketing in 2011 is all about the conversation. Whether you want to shift more widgets or shift customer perception, there is no better piece of advice to take on board than to BUILD BUILD BUILD a dialogue with your customers.

Social media offers many simple, manageable - and free - ways to do this.

comms2point0.co.uk is a shared learning space, created by – and written for – creative communications professionals. Home to fresh comment, informed opinion, in depth analysis and expert feature articles, comms2point.co.uk inspires and supports communications professionals in the UK, Europe and beyond.